Roku Stays Atop Streaming Media Player Market With 30 Percent Share

Roku continued as the top streaming media player brand in the U.S. between Q1 2015 and Q1 2016 with 30 percent market share, said Parks Associates. Amazon moved into a “virtual tie” for second with Google at 22 percent of sales, it said, and Apple TV was fourth at 20 percent. The top four had 94 percent of streaming media player sales during the period, up from 86 percent in 2014, Parks said. Amazon benefited from promoting its Fire TV devices in tandem with its Prime Video service and premium subscriptions through its Streaming Partners program. Apple had the biggest increase in unit sales on the launch of its long-awaited refresh of Apple TV, growing sales 50 percent over 2014. Roku and Amazon, meanwhile, benefit from offering multiple form factors: boxes and sticks, said analyst Barbara Kraus. A third of Roku sales for the period were sticks, compared with three-quarters of Amazon sales, she said. Thirty-six percent of U.S. broadband households own streaming media players, and Parks estimates 86 million streaming media players will be sold globally in 2019.